Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an imprint apparatus and an article manufacturing method.
Description of the Related Art
As the demand for micropatterning of semiconductor devices increases, a microfabrication technique of molding an uncured resin (uncured material) on a substrate using a mold to form a resin pattern on the substrate has received attention, in addition to a conventional photolithography technique. This technique is also called an imprint technique and can form a fine structure in the order of several nm on the substrate. A photocuring method is one example of the imprint technique. In an imprint apparatus which adopts the photocuring method, first, an ultraviolet curing resin (UV curing resin) (to be simply referred to as a “resin” hereinafter) is dispensed to a shot region (imprint region) on the substrate (wafer). For example, an inkjet method or the like is used as a dispensing method. Next, this resin (uncured resin) is molded using the mold. Then, a mold is released after the resin is cured by ultraviolet irradiation, thereby forming the resin pattern on the substrate.
In this imprint apparatus, a pattern is formed (to be referred to as “imprinted” hereinafter) to a plurality of imprint regions in order from an adjacent imprint region first. However, the next adjacent imprint region is influenced by heat or the like from the imprint region where the imprint process has been performed immediately before. There may be a case in which, for example, magnification correction of the next adjacent imprint region cannot be performed accurately because the imprint region where the imprint process has been performed immediately before and its peripheral substrate thermally expand or contract due to the influences of heat of ultraviolet irradiation and the temperature of the mold during a pattern formation process. To solve this, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-065135 discloses a method of preventing two imprint regions where the imprint process is performed successively from being adjacent to each other, thereby reducing a thermal influence.
In the imprint apparatus, when dispensing the resin to the imprint region on the substrate by the inkjet method, a part of the resin may become a foggy fine droplet (mist) and be scattered in the adjacent imprint regions. In this case, a pattern defect may occur in the imprint region where the imprint process has been performed before.